Barrett Watten
Barrett Watten (born October 3, 1948) is an American poet, editor, and academic often associated with the Language poets. Life Watten was born in Long Beach, California. After graduating from high school in Oakland, California, he attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then the University of California, Berkeley, where he received an A.B. in Biochemistry in 1969. At Berkeley he met poets Robert Grenier and Ron Silliman, and studied under Josephine Miles. Miles recommended Watten to the Iowa Writers' Workshop where he earned an M.F.A. in English (creative writing) in 1972. While at Iowa, Watten self-published and printed his debut collection, Radio Day in Soma City (1971) in a letterpress volume, unpaginated (25pp. approx.) in an edition of 75 copies, and began co-editing This with Grenier. In 1986, he returned to the University of California at Berkeley. Watten earned a Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1995. His dissertation was entitled: Horizon Shift: Progress and Negativity in American Modernism. Career Watten returned to the Bay Area and began to form relations with some experimental writers who would become known as the Language School. This 'school' was not a group precisely, but a tendency in the work of many of its so-called practitioners (see article on Language poets). Thus, Barrett Watten is one of the founding poets and editors of the Language School of poetry and one of its central theorists, editing This and Poetics Journal (with Lyn Hejinian) two of the crucial vehicles and networks for the dissemination of Language Poetry. Watten edited This, a central little magazine of the Language movement, and co-edited Poetics Journal, a theoretical venues. Since 1994, Watten has taught modernism and cultural studies at Wayne State University in Detroit. Other areas of research include postmodern culture and American literature; poetics; literary and cultural theory; visual studies; the avant-garde; and digital literature. He is married to poet Carla Harryman; their son, Asa, was born in 1984. Writing His published work includes Bad History (1998) and Frame (1971-1990) which appeared in 1997. Frame brings together 6 previously published works of poetry from 2 decades: Opera-Works ; Decay ; 1–10 ; Plasma/Paralleles/"X" ; Complete Thought and Conduit – along with 2 previously uncollected texts – City Fields and Frame. Two of his books – Progress (1985) and Under Erasure (1991) – were republished with a new preface, as Progress | Under Erasure (2004). Watten is co-author, with Michael Davidson, Lyn Hejinian, and Ron Silliman, of Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union (1991) . He published 2 volumes of literary and cultural criticism, Total Syntax (1985) and The Constructivist Moment: From material text to cultural poetics (2003).Holloway Reading Series at UC Berkeley; site provide info on Watten who read there Late 2006 saw the publication of the initial volume of The Grand Piano: An experiment in collective autobiography. (Detroit, MI: Mode A/This Press, 2006).For additional details, commentary, and links see Barrett Watten's piece [http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/ewatten/posts/post34.html How The Grand Piano Is Being Written] This work is describedin a publicity release at Watten's homepage (see "External links" above) as "an ongoing experiment in collective autobiography by ten writers identified with Language poetry in San Francisco. The project will consist of 10 volumes in all".Along with Watten, the other nine writers are: Bob Perelman, Ron Silliman, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, and Ted Pearson.This book further describes itself as follows: "It takes its name from a coffeehouse at 1607 Haight Street, where from 1976-79 the authors took part in a reading and performance series. The writing project, begun in 1998, was undertaken as an online collaboration, first via an interactive web site and later through a listserv. In 2007, Martin Richet translated into French Plasma / Parallèles / «X», a volume that joins together 3 long poems by Watson which originally appeared in a chapbook by Tuumba Press in 1979.Le Quartanier éditeur & revue Recognition Watten's volume of literary and cultural criticism, The Constructivist Moment: From material text to cultural poetics, was awarded the René Wellek Prize in 2004.Holloway Reading Series at UC Berkeley; site provide info on Watten who read there Publications Poetry *''Radio Day in Soma City'' (chapbook). Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa, 1971. *''Under Erasure''. La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Is.: Zasterle, 1971. *''Opera-Works''. Bolinas, CA: Big Sky, 1975. *''Decay''. San Francisco: This, 1977. *''Plasma Paralleles X'' (chapbook). Berkeley, CA: Tuumba Press, 1979. *''Complete Thought'' (chapbook). Berkeley, CA: Tuumba Press, 1982. *''Progress''. New York: Roof Books, 1985. *''Conduit''. San Francisco: GAZ, 1988. *''From Two Recent Works''. Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1990. *''Frame: 1971-1990'' (collected poems). Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1997. *''Progress / Under Erasure''. Copenhagen & Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2004. *''Bad History''. Berkeley, CA: Atelos, 1998. Non-fiction *''Leningrad: American writers in the Soviet Union'' (with Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, & Michael Davidson). San Francisco: Mercury House, 1991.Barry Watten, Professor, Department of English, Wayne State University. Web, Apr. 15, 2015. *''Total Syntax''. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985. *''The Constructivist Moment : from material text to cultural poetics''. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003. Edited *''Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental poetics and cultural displacement'' (edited with Carrie Noland). New York: Basingstoke / Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. *''A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing writing in the expanded field, 1982-1998'' (edited with Lyn Hejinian). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2013. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Barrett Watten, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Apr. 15, 2015. See also *Language poets *List of U.S. poets References Notes External links ;Poems *[http://www.markszine.com/404/bwind.htm Question of Interpretation] an interactive piece at mark(s), an online quarterly. ;Prose *[http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/coolidge/watten.html Total Syntax: The work in the World] (excerpt), an essay by Watten focusing on the work of Clark Coolidge ;Audio / video *Barrett Watten reading, 2013 *Barrett Watten at PennSound ;Books *Barrett Watten at Amazon.com * ;About *Barrett Watten at Wayne State University *[http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/issue.503/13.3metres.html "Barrett Watten's Bad History: A counter-epic of the Gulf War"] extended piece by Philip Metres on Watten's Bad History *[http://jacketmagazine.com/12/hess-david.html article on Watten at Jacket Magazine] *[http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/review.asp?id=79713 Detroit looks (8/6/2003)] George Tysh, arts editor of Metro Times (Detroit), briefly discusses The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics *Barrett Watten and Amiri Baraka : Smackdown! *Barrett Watten & Carl Sandburg's "Buttons" *Ron Silliman on Watten's formative influences Silliman discusses "15 or 16 works in twelve different categories that proved “most formative” for Watten". Silliman wrote about this over two consecutive days (for the follow-up posting [http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2007/07/when-in-editing-first-volume-of-poets.html link here]) *Self-Consuming Artifacts: Towards an unquiet metaphysics A blog posting by American poet Aaron McCollough on Barrett Watten & textsound, initiated by the 2008 crisis in "Tibet" (& "Tibet" being the title of a Watten poem) *Barrett Watten.net Official website ;Etc. *The Grand Piano website devoted to the 10 volumes of "Collective Autobiography" by 10 of the so-called "West Coast" group of Language poets, including Watten, which began serial publication in November 2006. Category:American poets Category:Language poets Category:People from Long Beach, California Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:American literary critics Category:Academics Category:Wayne State University faculty Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:University of Iowa alumni Category:Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni Category:American magazine founders Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Modernist poets Category:American academics